Mayor Orders Barriers Razed in New Orleans

AP

Published: February 23, 1987

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 22—
The city has torn down barriers dividing a mostly black New Orleans neighborhood from a predominantly white suburb. But a municipal official of the suburb said the barricade would be rebuilt on Monday.

The Jefferson Parish Council voted to erect the barriers after suburban residents complained that residents of New Orleans were driving into their neighborhood after dark, burglarizing homes and assaulting people. The barriers, made of strips of steel attached to wooden posts, were erected Thursday and Friday.

Bob Evans, chairman of the Jefferson Parish Council, said today that the city had no right to tear down the barricades since they were built on the Jefferson side of the border with New Orleans, which is Orleans Parish.

''He can't lock my people in,'' said Mayor Sidney Barthelemy of New Orleans, who ordered the city work crews to tear the barriers down Saturday.

''We are going to have to go to court,'' the Mayor said in a telephone interview. ''He can't block a state highway.''